After reading a Time for Kids article, Sports, Inc., students debated this week whether kids and their families should opt to participate in private club teams. The kids discussed the time and money involved in participating in sports teams that force families to make sacrifices, such as long hours at practices or private training sessions or foregoing vacations in the name of sports. They also talked about the risk of injury involved, as well as benefits such as developing advanced skills in their selected sport and the opportunity to visit new places posed by the travel involved in private sports teams.

In preparation for the persuasive essay they will write on the topic, we conducted an in-class mock debate where students stated their position and offered supporting facts from the article. The kids loved it and came up with excellent information supporting their position. As we approach report card season, the kids will have the chance to write a persuasive article on their own stating their position on whether or not students should get homework.

Congratulations to Jared Flores, room 13’s Student of the Month for October! Jared is a returning student to room 13. As a 5th grader, Jared has made remarkable growth in his management and organizational skills, academic performance and overall leadership ability. Jared is always ready with a hand up to participate in class discussions and offers incredible insight to the topics at hand. He is an exceptional role model for his peers, too, demonstrating impeccable grace and understanding. Congratulations, Jared!

This fall, we have been studying plants–how they grow, how they reproduce, the elements required for growth, ideal growing conditions, and more. We’ve explored the plants in our own school garden alongside the School Garden Club staff and even evaluated why a plant in our own classroom was dying. Today, we talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin including watching a time-lapse video of a pumpkin growing over 108 days.

We also initiated our own experiment by “planting” pumpkin seeds in a freshly picked pumpkin. We removed the top of the pumpkin, loosened the seeds inside and added soil for growing. We will monitor our pumpkin and any resulting foliage over the coming weeks to see if we can identify the next stages of the pumpkin life cycle. Keep your fingers crossed the weather cooperates with us and our pumpkin doesn’t freeze before anything grows!

Tomorrow, we are headed out on our field trip to the Bethel Farm. We will leave at 9am and return to school around 11:45. We will be back for our regularly scheduled lunchtime, so no special lunch arrangements need to be made.

Other important details:
• Please wear clothes and shoes that can get dirty. Shoes should be closed-toed, not sandals if possible.
• A raincoat and layers for keeping warm will be essential, as it is supposed to be quite cold and wet tomorrow.
• Bring a light snack. We will eat a snack at 11:00 before loading the bus around 11:30.
• Be ready to learn a lot and have fun!

Congratulations to Paij Richardson and Briahna Parker! Paij and Briahna are being recognized as September’s Self Manager and Student of the Month, respectively. Paij is a returning student to room 13 this year and has been instrumental in showing students new to our classroom how things operate and the expectations of students in our room. She is self-motivated, responsible and productive. Briahna, a 4th grader, is new to room 13 and has truly stepped up to the challenge of being looked up to as a role model to younger grade students. She becomes more responsible and mature each day, and the responsibility she shows demonstrates that she is well on her way to a successful 4th grade year. Congratulations, girls! I am most proud!

Did you know our room 13 family keeps photo albums of the activities, events and day-to-day happenings going on in our room? Even better, did you know they are digital albums families can enjoy from home or on the go, too? We like to keep things private from the general public, so we keep our albums on a password protected site, but you can access them by signing up as a parent or member of the Room 13 family!

To sign up, simply go to Shutterfly Photo Page and enter your information for a FREE Shutterfly account. If you already use Shutterfly, you can just login as yourself and it will send Mrs. Cox an email asking for permission to let you join. No one is allowed to join that hasn’t received the approval from Mrs. Cox. This way, we can help ensure that our kids’ photos stay safe.

Once you’re in, feel free to look through our albums or even add your own photos! You can also download photos to save on your personal device or print at local retailers. Shutterfly teams with Target and Walgreens, too, so you can print your selected photos directly to the store to pick up today!

If you have questions or need help signing up, just email Mrs. Cox and she’ll get you all set up.

Every morning, we start the day with a song and dance to get ourselves geared up for the day ahead. After having some fun with a song re-written by another teacher in Tennessee this year, we thought we’d try our hand at re-writing the lyrics to another song for our morning jig. We re-worked Carly Rae Jespen’s song, Call Me Maybe, and developed dance moves to go with it. Our final product is showcased in this video. We’re pretty proud of our work and this video (this is a live video of our second time “performing” the song with our moves). Get a copy of the class-written lyrics here.

Clear Lake held its annual spelling bee on Tuesday, celebrating a year of learning and hard work. Students were given a written exam to qualify for the semi-finals and were given an oral exam to move on to the final. The competition was tough–words like territory, challenge, nocturnal, colonel, and nuisance topped the list. Despite the competition, the kids did amazingly. Well done, kiddos!

Clear Lake 4th and 5th graders welcomed Senator Manning today in follow up to our field trip to the State Capitol earlier this spring. Senator Manning, a 24-year Army Veteran, also serves on the Bethel School District Budget Committee.

The senator spoke about recent bills the Oregon government has passed, impacts of the financial forecast of the state on education in Oregon and his outlook on the state’s role in social services in generations to come. He also took questions from the students.

Congratulations to our May Student of the Month, Michael Morrison, and our Self Manager, Korynn Starnes. These students have exhibited incredible characteristics of perseverance, self-discipline and focus.

Michael has strived to show what a responsible young man he is. He shows great care and compassion for others and is always looking for ways he can help others. His degree of self-discipline has improved exponentially, and he has become an exceptional problem solver. Michael is also developing into an excellent peer leader.

Korynn has demonstrated incredible growth in responsibility and maturity this year. From the start of the year, her ability to work through difficult tasks without quitting has improved many times over. She is well known among her peers for her impeccable penmanship and attention to detail. Her quality work and personal responsibility will serve her well as she moves towards middle school.

Congratulations, kiddos! It’s been a pleasure watching you grow this year.